Measuring Educational (In)Equality: Gini Coefficients of Educational Attainment

Petra Sauer, Institute for Human Capital and Development and Vienna University of Economics and Business
Samir KC, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, University of Vienna and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Until now, the main focus has been on measuring the average level of education while not much attention has been devoted to its distributional dimension. Yet, allowing for the second moment of education should greatly improve our understanding of population dynamics as well as the mechanics and channels linking education to economic outcomes in a broad sense, including not only economic growth but also inequality, poverty alleviation, democracy and political instability. We calculate Gini Coefficients of Educational Attainment for 138 countries. Besides covering the time span from 1970 to 2010 we will also present forward projections up to 2030. Beyond that, using the recently reconstructed IIASA dataset of populations by age, sex, and levels of education enables to incorporate the demographic dimension into our analysis. Thus, we aim at providing a measure which gives a comprehensive picture of the degree of inequality in educational attainment within and across societies.